{"id":6802,"date":"2026-05-09T07:07:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T12:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/?p=6802"},"modified":"2026-05-02T11:06:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T16:06:18","slug":"picatrix-image-of-saturn-according-to-mercurius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/09\/picatrix-image-of-saturn-according-to-mercurius\/","title":{"rendered":"Picatrix Image of Saturn According to Mercurius"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The image of Saturn, according to the opinion of wise Mercurius, is the shape of a man standing, raisihing his hands above his head and holding a fish in them. Below his feet is a lizard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picatrix, Bk II, Ch 10, Para 13, trans. Attrell and Porreca<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Behold, my penultimate (for now) Picatrix planetary image, Saturn according to Mercurius!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This one was a challenge because the image this description first conjured for me was more comical than I think most people are prepared to accept from\/of Saturn: a fat butch showing off her catch like she’s making an OKCupid profile, standing over the Sobe lizard:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gods, that was so much fun to draw. More than a month later, this one still makes me giggle, and getting past it to a more conventional image of Saturn was hard work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, though, I think I succeeded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can’t say why I decided that this Saturn should be dressed in an ancient Egyptian kilt, but I think it works well. That Egyptian theme helped me choose what sort of fish and lizard to draw with him: an electric Nile catfish and an Egyptian spiny-tailed lizard. The fish is admittedly so-so, but the lizard and its dramatic pose (copied from the fantastic reference photo I found) more than make up the difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As always, you can find high resolution versions of these images over on my Patreon<\/a>, where you can also find a lot of my art and writing that never makes it to the wider web.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The image of Saturn, according to the opinion of wise Mercurius, is the shape of a man standing, raisihing his hands above his head and holding a fish in them. Below his feet is a lizard. Picatrix, Bk II, Ch 10, Para 13, trans. Attrell and Porreca Behold, my penultimate (for now) Picatrix planetary image, … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[417,201,203,515],"class_list":["post-6802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-witchcraft","tag-image-of-saturn","tag-picatrix","tag-planetary-magic","tag-saturn-according-to-mercurius"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-1LI","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6802"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6807,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6802\/revisions\/6807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}